MIND

Human mind has two dimensions. The first one is related to basic functions and the second one is related to high functions. It is enough to have as much mind as that of an animal in order to be able to fulfill the functions that are common in all living beings like eating, reproducing and protecting oneself and to survive. The mind at this level is the common mind that all living beings have. A dog can lead its life by learning thirty-five commands at most; similarly, it is possible for monkeys to learn some things. However, along with the limited basic mind, man also has a superior mind. The contribution of this mind to man is developing his aims related to life other than his basic needs, making efforts in order to add meaning to life, developing the skill of expressing himself. However, a person needs to meet his basic needs first in order to realize his aims and himself. They are basic physiological needs first; and then come the needs of superior and high level like love and trust. While the other beings aim to survive only, the greatest aim of man is to realize himself. He can realize it by asking his metacognition genes the following questions and similar ones: “Why do I exist? Where did I come from? Where will I go?”

Reality of Mind, Feeling and Spirit

The basic and high functions that are valid for the mind are also valid for feelings. The basic question by the mind when faced by an event or situation is “What am I thinking of?”, whereas the regions of the brain that arrange feelings ask, “What am I feeling?” When high feelings are added to basic instincts, the reality of man appears. What is essential for man is feelings like love, trust and fear. Man, who uses his feeling of love in reproduction, eating and drinking, uses the feeling of fear in protecting himself from dangers. However, a feeling that cannot be comprehended by the mind brings about uncertainty. Man can realize high functions of the feelings by developing them.

Along with the reality of the mind and feeling, there is the reality of spirit. The question asked by spiritual reality related to life is “What do I understand?” The property that distinguishes man from other beings is this spiritual reality. Spiritual reality adds meaning to life; it also leads man to look for happiness. A kind of intuition exists in the questions that spirit tries to answer. For instance, the intuitional and artistic thoughts in man actually originate from spirit.

Those who make “inventions” can produce original thoughts by seeing that nobody has thought and found the divine aspect of that invention. This aspect is related to scientific and theoretical creativity beyond man’s dimension of matter. Man who can produce knowledge tries to find its equivalent in physics through spirit, which has no limit of time and space. Quantitative and qualitative researches search the biomagnetic and electrochemical equivalent of this state through physics. When Newton discovered gravity, he said it took place thanks to the spirit of God but it turned out to be originating from the magma layer in the center of the earth.

Physicists have been interested in the concept “God” for a long time. Mathematicians deal with fate more and try to explain it. It can easily be said for all of the branches of positive science that it is favorable for man to accept the existence of God unless it is proved that He does not exist. If He exists and we reject it, it shows that we are disrespectful toward Him and we will be in trouble. To reverse this situation, it is necessary to prove that God does not exist. The previous scientific view regarding the issue was as follows: “Believe in God but do not try to find scientific evidence because you cannot prove it scientifically.” There are two kinds of methods related to proving the existence of the Creator: The first one is the method of positive experiment and observation. We mean postulates like “Fire burns; arsenic poisons” when we say positive science. Positive science measures reality through five senses. The second scientific method is to try to find the truth by reasoning. We can make an inference like this: If there is smoke coming behind the mountain, we can say, “There is a fire behind the mountain though I do not see it.” Acting upon this, it is possible to say that God can be seen through the eye of the mind though it is not seen through five senses.

Reasoning methods enable us to infer that there must be an external force in the universe. Both religious sources and positive sciences agree on the big bang in the first creation of the universe. However, this bang is not a coincidental one; it is a planned bang in which growth and development are planned; it has a completely conscious design. The power that made the big bang needs to have two properties: it cannot have been of the same kind as the universe, that is matter; and it cannot have been limited by the conditions in the universe. That is, there must be a power beyond the concept of time for its realization. In heavenly religions, the concept of being away and free from time and space for the Creator corresponds with this state. When it is examined carefully, two attributes of the Creator become apparent here; these attributes show that He is beyond the dimension of time and the concept of space, that is, He is beyond matter. How can physics explain this reality? When we have a look at the classical brain electroencephalography used in order to search some waves produced by the human brain and to find the reality of spirit in man, we see that the brain produces four waves. However, there are more developed kinds of these electroencephalographs, which produce so many parasites. There is a device called “magnetoencephalograph”, which weighs eight tons and which can be found in very few places in the world. A research was carried out at New York University Faculty of Medicine, with the help of a device that could record the waves produced in regions of the brains as big as a lentil. According to the results of the research called Religion and Brain published in Newsweek magazine May 14, 2001 issue, there is a region called “God Spot” in the brain. When the human brain is deep asleep, in a coma and unconscious, it produces “delta waves” between the frequencies of 1 and 4; in the second phase of the sleep, it produces “theta waves” between the frequencies of 4 and 7, and “alpha waves” between the frequencies of 7 and 13.

Alpha waves are waves that man produces when he is awake and at ease. When we concentrate on something, beta waves between the frequencies of 13 and 30 are produced by the brain. The brain uses them when we learn something temporarily, when we concentrate on something and when we are stressful. It is the period when the brain works the hardest. If this wave is continuously produced, it means the brain works under stress. In addition, the property of the gamma wave of 40 hz appears when we concentrate on something intensively and when we record information in the brain. The researchers of New York University made a research on Buddhist priests; they gave intravenous injections to the priests through 256-electrode QEEG and PET devices; when the priests reached a state of trance, integrated themselves with the universe and felt that the boundaries of personality disappeared, the researchers saw that a region at the front part of the brain worked actively. During this period when oxygenation and blood building up activation increased, gamma waves were produced in the brain. When the main vibration of the brain combine with the waves produced at such states, “combined oscillation”, that is, “combined oscillation and vibration” take place. The brain communicates with the intelligent energy in the universe at that moment. Thus, intuitional thoughts and inspiration take place. When somebody is asleep he can see or do something. Like the researcher who saw two snakes clinging to each other discovered “the benzene ring”, Wagner captured a piece of music while sleeping, that is, when the brain produced a wave of 40 frequency by reaching the intelligent energy in the universe; then, he notated it and composed a wonderful piece of music. In this production and similar ones, there has to be an intensity that will necessitate the production of 40 hz frequency. These moments when intuitional thoughts appear are called “inspiration”. Symbolic thoughts that appear suddenly are not exactly the products of the brain because the brain does not have such materials. If Einstein had not made his discoveries, another person would definitely have made those discoveries fifty years later. However, there would not have been a person who would compose what Mozart composed because the works of Mozart do not consist of knowledge only. Mozart, Wagner, Piri Reis and Sinan seem to have worked their brains specially and accessed the source of knowledge in the universe and obtained knowledge from there. They are all among theses that there is a spiritual reality in man.

In a sense, man establishes a connection between the great spiritual reality in the universe and the small spiritual reality in man. In this connection, there seems to be a magnetic interaction. In this period, when magnetic, chemical and mechanical feelings are mentioned, magnetic feelings are an indication of the existence of oscillations and vibrations in the brain at the moments of love, fury or fear. If there is a receiver on the other side at that situation, that feeling starts to affect the other part. However, all of these theses need to be proved by using the measurability of science and cease to be claims. These situations, which seem possible through the methods of reasoning so far, are related to the quest of love, meaning, and inspiration, intuitional creativity in man and the operation of this mechanism. Besides, spiritual reality has to exist along with feelings because the mind or feelings cannot realize this formation alone. What feelings can do alone is to enable man survive and live better. What adds meaning to man is being able to view life at cosmic level, and needing a spiritual reality that will distinguish him from the other living beings at the point of revealing his ability to discover and his imagination.

Mind is a device; man can use this device well and correctly only through conscious acts because consciousness is something beyond spirit. According to literature, spirit is present in other beings too but only human beings have consciousness. When we say consciousness, the ability to choose, that is, will is involved. Man needs a consciousness that will manage his mind, feelings and spirit. Mind is a device that knows our interests and helps us protect ourselves; it produces ideas related to events and helps us establish the relationship of cause and effect. Feelings contribute to the development of man’s abilities by showing reactions. Spirit is the mechanism that establishes connection with the universe. The intelligent energy in the universe and the spiritual energy in us combine at a common point. At this stage, consciousness is superior to all of those three faculties. Consciousness controls spirit, too.

Illness of Meaninglessness

One of the biggest illnesses of the age we live in is the illness of meaninglessness. We live without being aware of our body. If we did not get ill, we would not even remember the existence of our organs. Similarly, if there were no psychological illnesses, people would not notice their faculties and would not need to search them.

Up to this age, people have generally accepted spirit and the Creator. Most of those who rejected the Creator scientifically denied either due to lack of knowledge or disregarding reactionally. The denial of the Creator scientifically has been in question in this age. When scientists and the people who made decisions regarding the future of the humanity said, “There is no scientific evidence regarding the existence of God” and denied the Creator, the state of affairs changed and the wrong virtually replaced the right. The thought “You do not have to account to the Creator” brought about the following idea in the community: “If there is no external power and if I do not have to account to Him, I can live however I want.” Thus, people regarded it normal to be slaves of their instincts. They did not feel any humane responsibility and many spiritual illnesses occurred as a result. One of those illnesses is the illness of meaninglessness. The thought “life has no meaning” suggested by science quietly made it obligatory to test the truthiness of the thoughts that reached this age. On the other hand, the idea about the non-existence of God made people ask the question why the Creator is necessary.

Air pollution, which causes carbon dioxide to become dense and oxygen to decrease in the city, also causes people to catch diseases like respiratory tract infections and cancer more easily due to greenhouse effect and causes the heat to increase and the ozone layer to be depleted. This is a kind of concrete pollution. The occurrence of various toxins and infections is a kind of concrete pollution like air pollution. Abstract pollution is the illness of meaninglessness.

In this period in which we live and capitalism is sovereign, the ethical values of heavenly religions were almost replaced by capitalist ethics. This situation, which caused the emergence of people who regarded money as the highest value and sanctified material things, brought about the unhappiness of people, contrary to what was expected. That people who had material welfare became unhappy showed that man had different psychological needs. This situation led man to search new meanings; it will be appropriate to name this as “the illness of meaninglessness”.

As a result of the illness of meaninglessness, man started to think that his existence was coincidental and meaningless. Man, who thought he himself was the cause of his creation, started to elevate himself because man tends to sanctify something. When man saw that material things were not enough for happiness, he started to become selfish and see himself as the center of the world because he focused on himself; he tried to give different meanings to everything; when he could not find the right meaning, he produced new/wrong meanings. He regarded fulfilling his own desires as the most important thing. Since the communities in which meaninglessness occurred were drifted toward chaos, common values started to disappear in these communities. The illness of meaninglessness led man to purposelessness, which, in turn, led man to unhappiness.

Capitalism regarded money as the highest value but money was not enough to make man happy. It was thought that life was coincidental and that man survived as a result of coincidental fights. Then, people tried to eliminate others so as not to be eliminated. Capitalist dogma perceived the universe like that. However, heavenly view imagines the universe as a system that has a purpose and meaning and advises man to form his life with the purpose of approaching the Creator. However, with the sovereignty of capitalism, these values were replaced by materialism and egoism; consequently, fighting, violence and unhappiness increased.

The illness of meaninglessness prevents man from being happy; it is necessary to know the faculties and to decide what is right for man in order to avoid it. The occurrence of this illness brought along the idea that people in the universe had to have a common purpose. This common purpose is a purpose that can be explained by the existence philosophy of the universe.

Mind, Logic and Consciousness

Mind can be defined in two ways as the classical mind that can be called Aristotle’s syllogism and the mind that is thought through modern logic. The definition of the mind in recent years is to think with feelings.

Logic is a person’s knowledge of thought, that is, the knowledge that examines the methods of man’s thinking. In Aristotle’s classical syllogism, there are three methods of reasoning. Aristotle’s syllogism uses the symbols of modern logic while using the words. In Aristotle’s syllogism, deduction is used. This method acts upon the general to reach the particular, on laws to reach the events and on causes to reach the effects. That is, in this method of inference, there is a law. A conclusion is arrived at from this general law. The aim of the logic here is to reach the truth without going to wrong places. Logic is an instrument that man can navigate like the steering wheel of a car. The aim is to reach the destination without having any accidents. Not to go to wrong places shows the controlling function of logic. Logic is the system of rules that controls and directs. It is related to ways of thinking correctly. In logic, internal and external perceptions, distinguishing between differences and similarities are in question. They are all methods used by the mind and logic.

Aristotle’s syllogism, that is, classical method of reasoning, favors comparison; that is, it compares A with B and B with A and then reaches the conclusion C. There is a famous example regarding the issue: All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal. In this example, a specific conclusion is arrived at from a general principle through comparison. This is the method of reasoning called “deduction”. To use more than one method, that is, to use both classical logic and modern logic forms mixed logic. When man does not use logic, he makes mistakes.

The second way of reasoning is induction, which is based on observation. In this method, a general proposition is derived from specific examples; a cause is arrived at from effects through observation. This method says this is the law when a conclusion occurs; thus, the law is found.

The third way of reasoning uses similarities called “analogies”. This method says, “A is similar to B. Then, A is not B.” That is, this method states that two things are not the same though they are similar; it implies that A and B may have some properties that are not similar. The difference between analogy and comparison is that in comparison, two things are compared and a conclusion is reached; in this method, analogies are used to explain a topic. By using this method of reasoning, we understand an abstract concept and make a conclusion. We say, “A radio has a battery; similarly, man has spiritual energy. Just like the frequency in the radio, man can establish a connection with the spiritual reality and cosmic energy.” These connections that we establish through analogies are called metaphors.

The mind is tried to be convince through metaphors. In fact, this is a method of thinking correctly rather than reasoning. This method of thinking is a method that makes man different, develops him, that is important for his happiness, that makes him know what is beneficial for him and that keeps him away from mistakes. However, Aristotle’s syllogism is not enough for a person to develop himself. In this case, it is necessary to add feelings to thought. Descartes said, “I think; therefore, I exist. I do not need feelings.” However, a neuroscientist called A. Damasio wrote a book called Descartes’s Error in 1995s; he stated that feelings were neglected due to that statement and that it was necessary to add feelings to thoughts. In fact, it is necessary to teach the brain to think by thoughts, that is, to include the right side of the brain in the act of thinking. The mind undertakes a role of arranging among all faculties.

How do We Think?

Our capital in thinking is the knowledge that we acquire. When man is born, he brings along a series of abilities. The baby who was very comfortable and happy in the mother’s womb is alone as if he has come to a strange planet when he is born. While he was secure and comfortable in the womb, he suddenly faces cold air. The reason for his first cry is the air that enters his lungs because it is cold compared to his mother’s womb. The baby feels insecure and fears. The first feeling man has is fear and the first reaction he gives is crying. Therefore, the first need of a baby is security. Therefore, the baby is immediately attached to the person that takes cares of him. This person does not have to be his biological mother. After the baby feels secure, he feels hunger. After that, he needs drinking, getting warm, being protected, etc.; his travel in life starts.

The baby has a limitless ability to learn in his brain. In an experiment with rats, the eyes of the rats were covered for six months; when the covers were removed six months later, it was noticed that they could not see. Although the rats had no problems in their eyes, they lost their ability to see. Since no stimulus of light went to the brain, the visual region of the brain did not work and their eyes became blind. The same thing is valid for man; if the eyes are not opened for six months after the birth, the child loses his ability to see.

The same thing is valid for feelings. The region related to feelings in the brain of the child starts to be shaped and to develop based on the reactions he receives from his environment. Thus, the child learns to love, to control fear and to restrain his desires; that is, he learns life. The most important duty lies in the family here. While the loves of seed start to develop and flourish in the child, he will love himself first, the person who takes care of him then, and his toys, family and the community as he grows up. When he becomes mature, he turns his love toward the Creator of the universe by looking at the universe. Thus, he finds the source of love.

Love is also knowledge that enters the brain. Feelings are potentially present but man develops as he learns them. A child who did not receive any love in his childhood and who was scolded and despised and who was raised by being pushed around will become aggressive since he was raised without love; he will not have mercy. He attaches importance to things that make him happy by saying, “what is beneficial for me is good; what is not useful for me is bad”; and his love develops this way. Feelings should be learned together with knowledge to prevent this because feelings turn to behavior by being combined with knowledge. Human brain is an area where knowledge has been written since early ages. If we liken our brain to a computer, this computer is full of the data and knowledge that we have learnt since our childhood and we use this knowledge. It is almost similar to use a computer and to use one’s brain. Then, beginning from our childhood, we need to develop our abilities by filing the knowledge in our brain correctly and using them correctly. In addition, we should learn to preserve the knowledge.

In order to save the knowledge in the brain and to make t permanent, it is necessary to believe and to add feelings to thoughts. If a person does not believe in some knowledge, he will not save it in the permanent memory and it will be deleted. If a person says, “this knowledge is necessary for me whether I believe it or not” for some knowledge, it will be permanent. Believing involves confirmation. Obsessions are similar to it. The part of the brain where the codes for the feeling of dirtiness or cleanliness are recorded works differently and involuntarily in obsessed people and produces wrong commands. For instance, although a person’s hands are clean, he asks the same question repeatedly: “I wonder if my hands are clean?” If a person allows this thought, it starts to affect him because the brain produces all kinds of thoughts; therefore, man needs to filter these thoughts. Therefore, it is very important to manage thoughts. In fact, to manage life is to manage thoughts and time. Thought management for man means to produce thoughts and to add new meanings to himself; however, to be able to do this, it is necessary to use one’s feelings, too. Then, intuition and thought will occur.

Mind and Will

Logic expresses the thought in man. Unlike logic, mind speaks and carries out. Logic perceives and thinks; mind reasons and infers; it reaches a conclusion by finding differences and similarities, and makes a decision. It breaks the whole into pieces and unites the pieces. Mind speaks with what logic does; that is, it speaks with data and knowledge; it expresses these data through words and starts to speak at an appropriate time and place.

Along with thought, speech is also the skill of the mind not logic. The mind expresses verbally what logic states as true or it realizes it by speaking/keeping silent when necessary. It is the mind that organizes all this. If feelings are added to all of these functions, the mind can still fulfill its duty. When the feelings are disabled, the mind does it under the effect of instincts; the events around it try to direct it.

The mind has the skill to plan and program; it determines targets, makes plans, thinks strategically and realizes the thoughts. We can say logic + speech + practice = mind. Therefore, mind makes use of experiences. It is important to use intelligence here because intelligence is the ability to learn. People with high intelligence collect more data. For instance, a person with normal intelligence uses five data while deciding about anything whereas people with high intelligence decide by using ten data. In fact, the faculty that decides is the mind but the will also plays an important role at the final point. While the mind analyzes the topic and shows it with all its aspects, the will makes a decision and says yes or no, or do or not do. That is, what activates the mind is the will. It is the most important decision mechanism of the spirit structure. The faculty that enables a person to make the final decision by defining it as good or bad is the will.

Logic is one of the areas of the human brain that is related to mental skills; it includes mental skills like recording and processing knowledge. Human brain also has an area related to social relationships (interaction, social skills, communication, etc.). The mind organizes them, too. Logic analyzes only the areas of the brain that arranges thought and mental skills whereas everything that enables us to exist in the community like social skills, management of stimuli, determining priorities, knowing how and where to act, occupational relationships, human relationships, determining targets and that forms the areas of interest related to the social skills in the brain is controlled by the mind. Will is superior to mind; spirit is superior to will and consciousness is superior to will. Will is controlled by consciousness.